Category: News

News

Kouraytem receives promotion and tenure

MMM Lab alumna, Dr. Nadia Kouraytem, was recently awarded tenure with promotion to Associate Professor in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Utah State University (USU). Dr. Kouraytem conducted her postdoctoral research in the MMM Lab prior to assuming her faculty position at USU, where she directs the METAL 3D Structures Lab. Congratulations to Dr. Kouraytem on this well-deserved accomplishment!!! To learn more about Dr. Kouraytem and her research group, please visit: https://www.kouraytemlab.me/home...

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MMM Lab Members Receive Prestigious Awards

MMM Lab members recently received prestigious national awards to support their Ph.D. research. Olivia Draughn was awarded a 2026 Rickover Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Laura Vietz was awarded a 2026 SMART Scholarship from the U.S. Department of War (DOW). Ph.D. student Nathan Searle has also been supported by the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Congratulations to all three lab members!         To learn more about these prestigious fellowships/scholarships, please visit the following: Rickover Fellowship Program in Nuclear Engineering https://www.smartscholarship.org/smart/en https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/grfp  ...

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Babu Rao and Spear publish in npj Computational Materials

Our latest work on an interleaved physics-based deep-learning approach to accelerate high-fidelity predictions of microstructurally small fatigue crack propagation in 3D polycrystals has just been published in npj Computational Materials! We believe the work provides a template for many time-series applications in materials science, beyond fatigue and fracture. Abstract: Conventional fracture mechanics asserts that the relevant physics governing small crack growth occurs near the crack front. However, for fatigue, computing these physics for each crack-growth increment over the entire microstructurally small crack regime is computationally intractable. Properly trained deep-learning surrogate models can massively accelerate fatigue crack-growth predictions by virtually...

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MMM Lab represents at TMS Specialty Congress

MMM Lab members presented their work at this year’s TMS Specialty Congress held in Anaheim, CA. The lineup of MMM Lab talks included: ************************************************************** Title: A High-Fidelity Fatigue-Life Modeling Framework Using Fast Fourier Transforms Track: 3DMS 2025 Speaker: Nathan Searle Co-authors: Krishna Logakannan, Laura Vietz, Benjamin Anglin (Naval Nuclear Lab), Ashley Spear ************************************************************** Title: An Interleaved Physics-Based Deep-Learning Framework as a New Cycle Jumping Approach for Microstructurally Small Fatigue Crack Growth Simulations Track: AIM 2025 Speaker: Ashley Spear Co-author: Vignesh Babu Rao ************************************************************** Title: Modeling the Hardening and Damage Evolution of Additively Manufactured Metal Matrix Composites Using an Elasto-Viscoplastic...

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Claire Ticknor wins student presentation competition at ICAM 2024

original story published at https://www.mech.utah.edu/me-student-wins-student-presentation-competition-at-icam/  Department of Mechanical Engineering PhD Student Claire Ticknor recently won a prestigious student presentation competition at the International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing (ICAM) hosted by ASTM in Atlanta. The competition was judged by a select group of Scientific Organizing Committee members on the quality of the presentation and technical content presented. Students from institutions around the world participated. The ICAM conference is the annual flagship conference for ASTM and emphasizes standardization, qualification, and certification around additive manufacturing, with a particular focus on industry-specific requirements. In addition to the specific requirements of various industry sectors,...

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“Innovative research in simulating 3-D cracking”

Prof. Ashley Spear has received the Constance Tipper Silver Medal from the International Congress on Fracture (ICF), the highest honor that the ICF bestows on a mid-career researcher. The award is given every four years in honor of Constance Tipper, a pioneer in the field of fracture mechanics who is well-known for her discoveries of ductile-to-brittle transition in metals used in the construction of wartime ships during World War II.  Spear received the medal in Tipper’s honor for her “innovative research in simulating 3-D cracking and multi-scale modeling of fracture in metals.” One of the cornerstones of Spear’s lab...

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MMM Lab Represents at TMS Annual Meeting

MMM Lab members recently presented work at the TMS Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA. The following presentations included MMM Lab members: Predicting Microstructurally Sensitive Fatigue-crack Path in WE43 Magnesium Using High-fidelity Numerical Modeling and Three-dimensional Experimental Characterization: Brian Phung, Duncan Greeley (Univ. of Michigan), Mohammadreza Yaghoobi (Univ. of Michigan), John Allison (Univ. of Michigan), Ashley Spear Accelerating Microstructurally Small Crack Growth Predictions in Three-dimensional Microstructures Using Deep Learning: Vignesh Babu Rao, Brian Phung, Bjorn Johnsson, Ashley Spear Predicting Microstructure-sensitive Fracture Behavior in AM IN625 Using a Damage-enabled Elasto-viscoplastic FFT Framework: Ashley Spear, Carter Cocke, Brian Phung, Laura Ziegler,...

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MMM Lab welcomes five new members

The MMM Lab recently welcomed Dr. Krishna Prasath Logakannan, Claire Ticknor, Jake Hirst, Bjorn Johnsson, and Allie Richards.   Dr. Krishna Logakannan joins the lab as a postdoctoral researcher after earning his Ph.D. in 2021 at IIT Madras and the India & Swinburne University of Technology.  He later moved to Johns Hopkins University where he was a member of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute prior to joining the MMM Lab at Utah.   Claire Ticknor joins the lab as a Ph.D. student. She is originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico, and earned her B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the...

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